Hands to Break Thought

I.
My fable is born as my youthful ember dies
On the third night of fasting and praying, it's eleven o'clock
It's my hour of production.
Annus miribilus in an hour
I am not awake until 11. I am not alive until 11.
Neither are you.
Begin the amblings of my mind. Twiddling thumbs,
You're lurking in the corner.
Hands like feathers break thoughts like granite.
Enthrone your hands, crown them king & queen
Of thought.
All the blues and purples of your entourage
Blind me
Do you see yet? I have green eyes but I'm not jealous
Why should I be?
Should I lament because you tell me to?
God, have mercy, am I a disciple?
My dictionary smells of theology
My thoughts come out like cockroaches
When you turn out the lights
Words words
My dictionary smells like theodocy
The dictionary line up scrolls though my mind,
Down my brain, I can see the page
Announcer
Anno Urbis Conditae
Annoy, annoyance, annoying
Annual
Annual Parallax
Annuitant


II.
Wind blows loud outside to shake me, but it's a whisper
"Who killed Keats?"
"When you wake up, do you know it's the last day of your life?"
Who will write my elegy? elegy. effigy.
Praying over me, emery, gritty thoughts. Broken into
Granules bye you
Turns them into ephemerids
Day-long May flys
You put thoughts to rest, closed coffin, cold ground
but not me
You are the pretense, the pomp, and the presumption
Write 400 lines about a man he never knew?
That was you too.
God, have mercy, am I a saint?
"Who killed Keats?" asks Shelley, but he can't finish his sentence.
He is choked and drown by your hands.
And you killed Keats
And you killed Shelley
You killed Plath
You broke Buckley
You broke Holly
You'll break me too.
Hold me like a whisper, hold me like a story
Hold me like a poem and say it to my face
But no, you sneak away when I'm shattered
The Quick and the Dead-- You show no mercy to either


III.
Leather books with browning pages
Light up quick like tempers, but burn slow like spring leaves
Is it raining yet to put you out?
Or build you up in puddles?
Will they write my name in water?
Scatter flowers that one swayed back & forth, back & forth
Like a pendulum, I welcome you, and despise you
Carry you over the threshold myself
And stuff you
And hang you over the mantle
God, have mercy, am I a hypocrite?
Who killed Keats? Who killed Keats?
It was you. It was you.
There are more answers than questions
The possibilities of the life you could have chosen.
More possibilities than choices, more choices than outcomes
More colors than royalty or peasantry
More colors than grief or consequence
Or months or seasons
You are brown and orange lie his Autumn,
But quicker and quicker
Leaves don't float like feathers
They drop like granite, like thoughts
Thoughts that snap when you step on twigs
SNAP you say, but with your hands that break thoughts,
Orphan them in a graveyard of ponderances.
Guess what time it is.


IV.
Your hands break thoughts like they break bread
Over a mahogany dinner table
With the sacrosanctity of family.
You betray family you abstruse folly.
The rogue wind dies down,
But the wreckage is still there.
Light it on fire,
With olive guitar strings & dove piano keys,
Your hands strum & play my failure
Your rogue hands anoint me-- blessed to live,
But cursed to watch, moved, but with dry eyes
God, have mercy, am I condemned?
Who will write my elegy? Will it be you?
Who will weep for me? Who will mourn for me?
Only you Only you.


V.
How unoriginal is death!
Just like death! Makes me ill...
There'll be no more exclamation marks
No more punctuation
Save tears that tears that end sentences & happiness
As they fall on strands of hair
on bereaved shoulders.
Grate my knuckles.
Grate them raw, grate them bloody
Break my heart
To see them. Shut my eyes
See her face, open them, still she's there
My hands are shaking-- the wind is working
My hands are itching To write of boys--
Fifteen & weeping, "Why?"
Sad boys with sad eyes
Eyes that weren't born to cry
Eyes that weren't born to see young eyes sewn shut
Their jaws clenched, their shoulders slouched,
Their hands shoved in pockets
Your hands to break through--
Your hands to break thought
Hands that grip plastic steering wheels
Not tightly enough
...and now little hands, pretty hands, in little red gloves
All alone
And your hands that break solitude, break comfort
Your hands that sew my eyes open
God, have mercy, am I a witness?
A messenger to tell a tale of boys? And of girls too?
Why did I laugh tonight?
When no joy builds puddles high enough to drown you out
I'll write a poem that all will play
And none will hear
For most, it simply cannot matter
That her sleep and his poetry are halted


VI.
Little hands, pretty hands, in little red gloves
All alone
Hold her like a whisper, hold her like a story
Hold her like a poem-- in those hands that break dreams--
And look at her prodigal face
As youthful embers die: his and hers and mine
Three days they fast. Three days I fast
Quick, and the dead
You show no mercy to either
So break my hands with salvation if you do
Strong hands, roue hands, emery hands, praying over me
Who will write my elegy? Who will make my effigy?
Only you? Only you.


copyright 2000


http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Mar-31-Sat-2001/news/15771313.html
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2001/feb/16/jessica-williams-found-guilty-in-deaths-of-six-tee/
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/dec/10/decade-was/
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2000/mar/20/sixth-victim-dies-in-i-15-accident/

the sentimentalists

"If you wish to move a reader, write more coldly." --Chekov

There is this overarching, cool people, serious writer kind of thing that utterly loathes the sentimental. I suppose I can understand that to an extent. But I would go so far as to say that I am a sentimentalist writer-- at the least, walking right up to the line of it and peering over. Some will say that makes writing too feminine (gasp!). That it's purple. But maybe I'm purple. I'm not the only one not afraid to speak out about some sentimentalism. Two of my favorites, in fact, Charles Dickens and John Irving often make great use of it. And Irving has a whole essay about it. 


I think what people really don’t like is the weight you feel as a reader that something was laborious. You don’t want to see the strings, see a lot of effort in the writing. That you can’t be both natural and sentimental. I think people equate sentimentality with being manipulated. (Manipulation of your emotions also has a time and place, yeah? Even if it makes you feel uncomfortable.)  Either way, I think you can be natural and sentimental. 

All I know is that I’ll do whatever I have to do to gut you. If it’s three words, fine. If it’s 300, that’s fine too.

But the best times of my life were when I was reduced to mush from what someone said. Sometimes these are private moments I have alone with a book or a letter. Sometimes they’re the conversations of a lifetime—on a couch, in a hotel bathroom, on the phone while I walk 40 blocks down Manhattan.

I don't want to write more coldly.

I want your heart on the table.

You decide how easy you’re gonna give it to me.

More Rise shortly…

Excerpt of Irving's "In Defense of Sentimentality" after the jump

baby photo update

AHH!! I can't handle her! She is too much. I love Tigerlily!

dulcius ex asperis

I've always been big into genealogy. I'm sort of my family historian. Then my dad caught the big and did a bunch of research on his own, giving us all a big book of our ancestry. I bet I could prove my relationship to just about anybody...hahhaa.
I wear this clan ring and people ask me about it all the time. So I've started researching the more ancient parts of Ferguson clan history, some of which I'll be rolling out here. But this weekend is the clan gathering in Stirling. Man, would I like to be there just to see what the thing is really like. My only knowledge of a clan gathering was the one depicted on my favorite TV show, Monarch of the Glen.

There's lots to say about our ancestors, but let's just say it comes as no surprise that many of our folks were the most well-known poets, philosophers & romantics in Scottish history.

Adam Ferguson the philosopher (1724-1816) and Robert Fergusson (1750-1774) the poet and mentor of Robert Burns. And in the realm of romance, the heroine of the song Annie Laurie was married to Alexander Ferguson of Craigdarroch.

i always knew that empathy was dangerous...

As much as I love positive energy, I might love a well-worded rant even more. This is one of the best rants I've ever seen. And even more wonderful-- a multi-media rant.

"empathy leads you to very bad decisions...many times." --Glenn Beck

For the record, Glenn Beck made about 1000x what I made last year. Maybe if I can just find something absolutely ridiculous enough to say, I too can be experience the beautiful America he cries about so often.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

in 60 seconds

love this. I'm about done with SATC. Although, for the record, I'm for Aidan. I'd have been all about Aidan. Oh well. After curly hair and the writer thing, me and Carrie B wildly diverge. mercifully.

warrior princess - part two

  Zadie and Scotty saved Big Sky America for last.  Even though the rain had water logged the wood of the tree house, putting out most of the sparks with a little singe, they knew that Big Sky America would be different.
      Scotty stood poised over the fuse, waiting for Zadie to start their traditional fireworks song.
      “You have to sing it or it’s bad luck,” Scotty said. “And if you don’t, I won’t let you come back in my tree house.”
      So she stood up on the thick wrung of the tree house railing, where they had positioned the red white & blue rocket. With arms outstretched, she sang a non-sense aria she knew by heart.
      Scotty clapped and then steadied himself with the lighter he had taken from his dad. “Ready? One, two, now”
      The fire geyser of sparks knocked the whole thing off balance and it fell of the railing onto the wet wood of the tree house deck. Instead of shooting upwards, it spun streams of fire in colored circles around the children’s bare legs. Zadie could feel it singing her little legs and she smelled burnt hair. They both screamed and jumped, while the firework itself screeched and hissed it’s way dead.

       A moment later, Zadie saw her mother and Mr. Booter come running from Scotty’s house. Zadie’s mother looked like a dwarf below when she yelled, “Don’t make me come up there and get you. You know I don’t like heights.”
      Mr. Booter had already started climbing the ladder. “Are you kids okay?” he asked. When he got to the top, he stood staring at the burnt-out carcass of the Big Sky America.
      “You two are lucky this wood is so wet or else you might have burnt this house down with you in it.”
      Zadie knew she was in real trouble. Her mother would start yelling at Mr. Booter, and then later, she would yell at Zadie. And she’d really never ever be allowed to Scotty again this time. Scotty’s last memory of her would be a screaming girl with a horrible, ugly mullet.
      Zadie followed her mother with her head bent low, trying not to look at Scotty. But instead of going to their own house, her mother walked with Mr. Booter into Scotty’s house. After a confused moment, Zadie followed her mother in as well.

the fear of wasted time

I'll post a new short story (in installments) beginning tomorrow morning at around 8:30.

In the meantime, here are some Courtyard Hounds. Emily is no Natalie Maines...there's no searing precision, like Natalie. She doesn't just wring your heart out like Natalie. But Martie & Emily have always been great song writers & terrific musicians. And I'll take 2/3 of  the chicks on a mellow album over none of the chicks any day.

I recommend this one, The Fear of Wasted Time:

Goodnight for now! Tomorrow: Warrior Princess

"There is nothing wasted in Buddhism."

the real america

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
On Topic: In the News - The Real America
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Personally, I've had about enough of being called Un-American. Yeah, so I'm moving to Scotland (in part because teabaggers and death threats against presidents and senators makes me sick) There are certainly 2 Americas. I don't argue with that. But I've had enough of hearing that my America isn't the "REAL America."
As though the sacrifices and priorities of New Yorkers and Washingtonians are less meaningful or less valuable than the sacrifices and priorities of Alaskans or Texans or Kansans (Kansas-ans ??).

It recalls my favorite New Yorker article of all time, which made me cry (again) several days after the 2004 election.

And, of course, the lovely Jon Stewart also noticed.

Indeed, there are 2 Americas. But the insistence that one is real and one is...what??...they never say...fake?? is not only preposterous, but  insulting.

Here in the big coastal cities, we have reason to fear for the immediate safety of our lives and our families—more reason, it must be said, than have the residents of the “heartland,” to which the per-capita bulk of “homeland security” resources, along with extra electoral votes, are distributed. It was deep-blue New York (which went three to one for Kerry) and deep-blue Washington, D.C. (nine to one Kerry), that were, and presumably remain, Al Qaeda’s targets of choice.

In the heartland, it is claimed, some view the coastal cities as faintly un-American. The terrorists do not agree. They see us as the very essence—the heart, if you like—of America. 

Trapped in lament/To the poet's core

Mayer, despite his propensity to spontaneously combust on the pressure of his own thought pattern whenever prompted to speak in any other form than lyrics, has a knack for choosing covers.


I really do think he's a genius. Particularly when he lets the guitar do the talking.


Now, I have a soft-spot for the guy because 1. I actually kinda get his logic most of the time (not the napalm thing, but the other stuff). It almost always comes out wrong, but I see what he's getting at. And 2. probably most importantly, I feel attached to him because, amongst everyone I know, I take credit for "discovering him" in 1999. That sounds kind of ridiculous (nobody discovers anybody) but I did befriend him at a coffee shop in Little Five Points in Atlanta one hot July day in 1999. I went up to him largely because I thought he was cute and tall and had a downright buttery voice. But even more than that, I went up to him to make someone else jealous.


It worked. John & I pseudo (pseudo pseudo) stayed in touch for a number of years (I promoted Room For Squares in Japan) and later on that day in L5P, the boy I was trying to make jealous actually kinda fought with 2 other boys for the privilege of buying me a dress (Which I still have.)


But anyhow, John always puts out an album of what I need, when I need it. This winter, the stellar cover of "I'm On Fire" was one of the best things about his new album and I've noticed for several months that he's been pairing the song in concert with the...no joke, straightup heavenly...Emmylou Harris song, "Where Will I Be."


I like the weight he adds to the song. John's version feels very repentant, very of the human element. Of the body. Wounded in a different way. Emmylou's is  so light-winged, which is part of what's great about her....like the song might fly away.


I remember Emmylou Harris very vividly from childhood. Especially this song. I remember wishing I could have a mother like Emmylou Harris, soft and soothing like she was: one part, like, medicine woman or hippie tree-nymph and one part bless-her-heart gospel mother. Like you think she's going to smell like patchouli, and instead she smells like jasmine.


I love questions not phrased as questions. I love that "Where Will I Be," somehow doesn't sound like a question ever in this song... just a looking out, into the distance.


We listened to a lot of Emmylou while we were waiting for TL  to arrive.
And I'm thinking of her now on this perfect Friday evening, along with John and his great taste in covers.


Happy Weekend. Enjoy the original after the jump.

The streets are cracked
And there's glass everywhere
And a baby stares out
With motherless eyes
Under long gone beauty
On fields of war
Trapped in lament
To the poet's core

Oh where oh where will I be
Oh where oh when that trumpet sounds 

the together people & the alone people

Maybe it’s part of what it means to be a writer—to be an observer more than a participant. (Not that I don't participate...just... indulge me in an unemotional sociological tangent for a moment [that's why I'm wearing my scientist glasses in the photo <--------]) But it seems to me, and always has, that there are the people who spend their whole lives in some form of together, and then there are the alone people. 

The together people are almost always together and the alone people are almost always alone—except for brief, exotic moments where the together people allow one of the alone people into their world temporarily. And for a glimpsing minute, the alone people have the anthropological experience of living the life of (or at least in the midst of) the together people.

Together people (this will come as no shock) stick together…with other together people. They’re the kind of people who are always in relationships, really put their family first and often adopt other people into their family of togetherness. But the only ones who stick, really stick are other together people. An alone person can be loved and even accepted as the fun, eccentric fill-in-the-blank relationship, but will never be included to the extent that the other together people will be included.


This is possibly because the alone people, of their own accord or compulsion, will need to remove themselves, if only for a bit, to go inward, to think about the events, maybe even to write about them. But in that moment, the one where they stop living the moment and pause to ponder it, record it, analyze it, describe it, the together people have already moved on with the living of it. And you're one step behind. 

I’ll let you guess which one of these 2 kinds of people I am. And which kinds of people I mostly admire. Maybe I am subject to my own hold-outs—the way I hold a part of myself back from being known too well. My life seems more like a press junket-- moving from one still moment of connection to the next. Meaningful, but fleeting, and very spaced out. A collection of moments in between work phone calls. Blips on the together ones' radars, but that add up to my life. I don’t doubt that I am loved. But even my own hopeful self has a hard time not believing that I am best loved in small doses. I can see that.


Loving someone in small doses will never make for them becoming a together person. I don’t know what actual qualities go towards making someone a together person (perhaps it’s really a gene or something) but I do know this much: If you’re best appreciated at alternating intervals and no one can handle you everyday, the alone life is where you’re headed.

Which might even be okay for me. You've read some of my thoughts on the mind-blowing hurt that people inflict on one another. Sometimes I really do think I'd rather be on my own-- I know how I'll treat myself. 

Oh, but I can spot a together person from a mile away. The serial monogamists, the family folks, the "Groups"...I've known them all and at certain times in my life, I've studied them thinking, "What is it that they do to always be so surrounded?" As though I could somehow turn into one. Is it like citizenship? Do the alone people need the legitimacy of a together person? Like a passport. If you can somehow attach yourself to one, you can can gain a kind of legal citizenship? Or can an alone person only seek to find some tentative arrangement with another alien? Maybe we'll never know. 

There is only the question: When will I be blown up?

I am unabashedly biased in most of my artistic preferences. I gravitate towards Celts & Southerners. Particularly in high school, Tennessee Williams & Faulkner & Flannery O’Connor (and of course, Margaret Mitchell) were about all I needed in the world. (I’ll get to Celts later, but today, Southerners—one in particular.)

I’m hanging out with my old boss this weekend in beautiful Forrest Hills Gardens, so I was reminded of the time a few years ago (I was really struggling about [the ususal] writing, the human condition, etc) when he sent me Faulkner’s Nobel Acceptance speech.

There’s also this “video” which is just a still, but has the original audio (practically inaudible due to Faulkner’s [amazing] thick drawl) which I’m including as well. Apparently, in the room, (because you couldn't make out what he was saying) most folks didn't realize the magnitude and power of the speech. It was only later, when they saw it printed. 

The kind of calamities and world tension of today seems to echo his sentiments of 1950. For as specifically period & specifically local as Faulkner writes, his world view transcends all of that.

I love looking at other people’s lists of “Greatest Writers of All Time.” This one, of the 100 Best from This Recording, is one I can pretty much get behind. (Keats is #30, Tenn is #55 , Flannery #57, Dickens #16 [I’d rate him nearer #1, personally]  Iris Murdoch #40. I’d ditch at least one of the people on this list in favor of Camus, of course, but  It’s got this guy at number one, which I’m cool with. 


(More on Faulkner here)

Stockholm, December 10, 1950

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

an excerpt from Rise

Eugene Talmadge

For the first time ever, I've decided to release a few excerpts from the novel, Rise, I wrote from age 18-23 (and have been writing and rewriting from age 24-28-- don't ask, it's a long story.)


In trying to decide what I want to focus my time on while I'm in Scotland, I'm faced with this question-- do I want to continue on with this project that I've been so close to getting right so many times, or just let it go and move on to a new novel... ??... and if I start a new novel, what kind of animal will I want that to be?


So my thought of how I would answer that question to is work through some problematic (And also some fun) sections and see how I feel about them. And get you all's help. Then, in September, I'll see how I feel.


For example, this much older section (Written probably around 2001, when I was 19.) It's an important scene in the beginning where the two main characters first briefly meet.


In case you're wondering, Rise is an exploration of my generation's relationship with religion and spirituality told primarily through the eyes of two would-be loves who meet at a Theological seminary camp in Georgia as teenagers. It alternates between their two perspectives over many years, but this section is just from the pov of Meg. The girl is a spunky Buddhist and the guy is a Methodist from Texas. It is in no way autobiographical.


:) Enjoy after the jump!

blackbird

I love this rare footage of Paul McCartney singing "Blackbird." I love when he messes up & that the photographer chose to film Paul's shoes most of the video. Part of why I still have a record player is I like how real records sound. That they recorded an actual moment, vs. being the best take and split take of who knows how many instruments and faux sounds.

I love that on "Sittin' on  the Dock of the Bay," you can hear Otis's fingers on the frets. The moments where you can hear the fingers on the frets are rare in this world of modernity. Everything's clean and sterile, but I think I like things a little more grainy.

Goodnight!

luna tigerlily

My friend Josh (Udo online?? I don't know the protocol...) was kind enough to remind me of the lovely Luna song, Tiger Lily. He sent me the track, which I've been listening to all day. It warms my heart to know that something about the little lady seems to resonate with people. I knew as soon as I saw her that Steven and I were going to write a song about her. I'm not sure what it's going to be yet, but I'm excited!

I'm off to see a show. More later this evening. In between now and then, here is a live version of front man Dean Wareham & some folks singing "Tiger Lily."

haunted by geography

I'm always looking for modern day poets. Most of the time, they take on other forms-- they aren't publishing anthologies or sonnets in The New Yorker. Like Jonathan Harris, (a sort of visual poet) and of course, musicians. I think possibly the best living poets for me are The Indigo Girls.


The way they can hang a tone in the air, palpable, a kind of world building. You know exactly where you are. Pick a song, any song. Starkville, for example. Typically, I favor the songs that Emily writes (they're brighter or at least softer) when Amy's tend to be both darker & harsher. But Starkville.  Starkville sounds exactly the way I feel in the most melancholy part of my soul.


The way  that I have no idea what "haunted by geography means" except that I know exactly what it means.


Something to do with me being a nomad of sorts-- always trying to get back to someone; get to somewhere I've never been. Something to do with my times at YTI, as all things Indigo Girls have a way of doing. Some kind of connection to a foreign faith.  Some kind of abandoned town. The way I just keep moving and somehow that makes me feel still.


Ranier Maria Rilke said, "Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life."


That's true. But I think Amy & Emily sure do bridge that gap between what's sayable & unsayable about an experience. I can't decide whether I know more about how this song makes me feel because they articulated so well, or because of what isn't articulated.


The ineffible. I'm going to come back to that. But for now...




If you were here in Starkville, the townie boys would love the way you stare.
If you were here in Starkville, the local girls , they wouldn't have a prayer.
I spent a reckless night inside the wonder of your everlasting charm,
now I'm haunted by geography, and the flora and the fauna of your heart.

At the dawning of some road worn day,
I called you on a whim just to say-
"The morning birds are singing",
but I could not do them justice, so I hung up and fell back to sleep.

I'm in love with my mobility, but sometimes this life can be a drag;
like when I noticed your nobility and how my leaving only held you back.
I remember one occasion- you were drinking,-when you asked me to the coast,
but I was hell bent on agony back then, so I missed the boat.

At the dawning of a road worn day,
I called you a whim just to say,
"My regrets become distractions when I can not do them justice",
then I hung up and fell back to sleep.

When I was down in Starkville, I was hiding out inside some Comfort Inn
from a local gang of troubadors, when the homecoming queen -she come riding in.
I slipped out of my room into the rain and I went running for my health.
The headlights turned to moonlight, and finally I was running by myself.

At the dawning of this road worn day,
I call you a whim just to say,
"The morning birds are singing". 

your opinion, please

which blog header do you like best? I like the one with the picture (so dreamy! thanks eternal, Corinne!) but the shape, size & simplicity of the toile wallpaper from Timorous Beasties (it's a pic I took at my birthday party at Highlands) What do you think? Which should I keep?

PS- Bonus, poetry lovers...can anyone name which poet/poem the phrase "Timorous Beasties" comes from??

what a miracle

After all the waiting, the tears, the drama (whoa, the drama) to have met Tigerlily and know that she is safe and a part of a truly one of a kind family is the best feeling in  the world. I feel protective and lucky to be part of such a family, myself. At Emily's wedding, I thanked them for raising me...me & every other kid who gets within a 10 foot radius of their house. I could thank them every day for their special kind of together.


After everything Emily & TL have been through together, there was, finally, such extraordinary moments of peace. I know that they are bonded forever. To finally hold her... oh I just love this little baby forever. And being a part of this experience certainly made me affirmed that I want one of those little folks of my own someday.


All my love to the indigo child, Miss TL.